Kendrick Lamar - Auntie Diaries (Thoughts)

So, I started watching the Knox Hill reaction to this without thinking about it that much - I saw Kendrick's name, I like Kendrick's music, so I clicked on it. Then I noticed and recognized the title of the song.
About few weeks / a month back me and this other queer person got talking (on Knox's video's comment section) about J. Cole's trans bars, and for some reason, the article I read about them claimed that Auntie Diaries was a J. Cole song.
If I knew it was a Kendrick song, I would have checked out the lyrics right then and there, because I know next to nothing about J. Cole, but I do know something about Kendrick - I'll get to it.

So, this made me pause - I paused the video and I took a few seconds to recover from this new information, and read through the lyrics and some of the comments on Knox's video and now I'm here. I paused at 5min, he didn't really say much yet. I will finish watching the video before posting this so I can take his opinion (as an MC, an American and a native English speaker) into account before doing so, in case there's something I don't understand.

And I'm giving my opinion on the lyrics as a trans person (AFAB nonbinary to be specific), who interacts with a lot of other trans people online, and the leftist/liberal side of things in general.

Apparently, this song "divided the LGBTQ+ community". I didn't see it, no one I follow talked about this song at all. I had to google to find out this "divided" us.

The comment section under the video seemed scary, I don't want to express my opinion there... I'm 0% up for confrontation about this. I just want to get my thoughts down, so they're out there for people to read, but not to comment back on. And so I can come back to my thoughts later. I don't want to argue with a bunch of confrontational cis hiphop heads on whether the lyrics of a song are transphobic or not. (And I'm not assuming they'd be confrontational - I saw them being that way, and that's why I'm here and not there. Expressing my opinion in my own little corner of the internet instead.)

I'm going to be focusing on the lyricism and not so much on the musical / rap technical aspects today. I usually try to do both.

(I didn't have time to finish the list below in one day, so I titled this post as Thoughts instead of Initial Thoughts.)

I think listing pros and cons seems like a natural way for me to process these lyrics. 

Pro: The queer community in general does have an opinion about Kendrick (as a person) and that opinion is positive. He is considered an ally. I think I heard positive things about him as an ally before I ever heard his music.

Pro: This song seems to be generally regarded as a pro-trans song. So that's a positive sign, obviously. He's cis and straight, and a big artist. Hopefully this song shifts people's opinions towards trans people into the positive direction.

Pro: DAMAG3 is a trans MC and their biggest inspiration is Kendrick. If they found him to be transphobic, they'd probably stop mentioning what a big inspiration he's been to them.

(Pro: Knox is finally swinging a bit more to the left! Politically, he's a middle, and his intention, assuming I've understood him correctly, has been to kinda swing back and forth between the right wing and the left wing (reacting to right wing and left wing artists around the same amount), to create a bridge and open up a conversation between the sides, on his a-"little"-bigger corner of the internet. Sorry for not participating in the conversation this time, Knox.
He's been stuck on the middle-to-right for quite some time now and I was losing hope. Sure, he's been reacting to Kendrick and apparently Eminem is considered left-wing now, but none of the songs have been about politics, where as the right-wing songs he's done, like Tom McDonald, have been about politics. And yes, leftist artists do talk about politics. You're just not looking hard enough if you think they're not.)

Con: Kendrick keeps on flip flopping between he/him and she/her pronouns. As the song progresses, we learn that Kendrick has a relative, who was assigned female at birth (his "auntie"), who then came out as a trans man (=is Kdot's uncle, uses he/him pronouns), and then later realized she's more of a masc (=masculine-presenting) woman than a man actually, so she came out a second time, this time as a woman. In summary, this is her journey as she was questioning her gender.
Kendrick doesn't follow this pattern, though - from she/her, to he/him, back to she/her. His use of pronouns is, at a first glance, all over the place.

Pro: She felt comfortable coming out to her family, not once but twice. First as a straight trans man, then as a queer cis woman. (She's still into women, so she's not cishet.) They more or less let her be herself and experiment with her gender representation.
Coming out isn't always as clear cut as movies and other media make it out to be. It does take questioning and figuring out and one's identity can change over time.
Not to mention coming out! Media makes it seem like: once you're out, you're out, and now everybody knows. But that's not how it goes. You need to come out to every single person / group of people separately, over and over again for the rest of your life. I'm technically out, but currenly there are more people in my life that do not know I'm queer than ones who do. It hasn't naturally came up, plus I don't know how open-minded everyone is, so...

(I had a long side tangent here about my personal journey with my identity, but I decided to move it to the end of this post instead, because I feel like people who are here for the song and not for me are not going to be interested in reading that, plus if they read this on their phone, that tangent is one heck of a long wall of text and even scrolling past that could turn a person away from reading the rest. I kept it at the end, as one example of how one's identity can shift over time.)

Pro: When you read the lyrics, it becomes quite obvious he was a child when this happened, and it was the first time he met a queer person and that made him a bit confused. Some kids pick up on trans identities very quickly, as others have a hard time wrapping their head around it. I think how we're brought up has a big influence on that. If we're taught from a young age that girls can do anything boys can (play in the mud, climb trees, do sports, dream of working on a male-dominated field, etc) and boys are allowed to do anything girls do (cry, be vulnerable, talk about feelings, wear makeup, have long hair, etc), they grow up to be more balanced human beings overall and perhaps being more masculine or feminine doesn't make them question their gender. But if the stereotypical gender roles are instilled upon us when we're kids, we get people like Kendrick and his aunt. People who see gender as something indistinguishable from gender roles. 

"Con": Someone in Knox's comment section said Kdot changes the pronouns based on the gender roles he associated with each action the aunt did at a current time, but looking at them, that doesn't line up perfectly. (Also, the same person used talking about a "girlfriend" as affirming the relative is a man, but nah fam :'D Women can have girlfriends, having a gf doesn't make you a man.)
- "Drinking Paul Masson with her hat turned backwards" - Idk about Paul Masson, but a hat turned backwards sounds more masculine to me, yet he uses she/her pronouns
- "I watch him and his girl hold their hands down" - although, if Kdot grew up in an environment that didn't involve or teach him about gay people existing, having a girlfriend would probably seem like a male thing to him?
- "Hoping that she pull up tomorrow" as in driving a car, which I think is seen more as a masculine thing, ain't it? The stereotype is that women are bad drivers (where in reality, male drivers are involved in more car crashes and get more tickets).
- "I asked my momma why my uncles don't like him that much / And at the parties why they always wanna fight him that much" - physical altercations and fighting, generally seen as a more masculine activity
- then the mom uses he/him pronouns :) go mom!
- "She picking me up from school, they stare at her in the face / They couldn't comprehend what I grew accustomed" - well, this explains the previous car bars a little more. Kendrick's school friends still saw the aunt as a woman, even though she identified as a man back then
- "He gave me some cash, then gave me some game" - sure, having money is maybe a bit more associated with men to this day, even though women are allowed to work and handle money now. Only about 50 years ago, a woman couldn't even open a bank account without the approval of a male spouse or relative. We've come a long way in a short period of time.
- "She even cut my hair at the pad, was loving my fade" - about 90% of hairdressers are women, the math is mathing

Pro: He didn't have a problem with her identifying as a man briefly, he loved her just as much. He talks about the things he saw and experienced and there isn't a hint of judgement there. He focuses more on how he loved it when she picked him up from school and how they listened to music together and he got into hiphop because of her, and how she gave him a rad haircut. The lyrics are authentic and real. These are the kind of things kids remember.

Pro: Kdot's mom (=auntie's sister or sister-in-law) is very supportive, saying the uncles are just jealous cause the aunt gets more women than them, she also uses the correct pronouns.

Pro: He says "I think I'm old enough to understand now" - admitting he wasn't old enough to understand it earlier, which could explain the flip flopping between pronouns.

Con: He doesn't seem to truly understand it, though. Flip flopping with the pronouns doesn't add much value to the song, especially considering he doesn't even align them perfectly with the gender roles many people are forced to adhere to. He doesn't come off as a confused child (which is what I think he was going for), he comes off as a confused adult. Another thing is the "My auntie is a man now" line. He could have put it in quotes if he wanted to express that this is a sentence an adult used when trying to explain the situation to him. Besides, later he says "my auntie was a man now". No she wasn't. She thought she was, she identified as one, but it turned out she wasn't, she was in fact a masc woman. So I can't really give him the benefit of the doubt that maybe this was a quote.

Con: Using the word faggot. Some gay people are trying to reclaim it, with varying success, but I wouldn't use it, especially if I was a straight person. 

Pro: Explaining how the times were in fact different, how words like "faggot" and "gay" were very much commonly used in kid/teen slang to express they didn't like something, and so was the R-word that refers to a disabled person. And it didn't really have much to do with actual homophobia - sure, words that express someone is a homosexual were used to describe a thing someone didn't like, and that context does make using them somewhat homophobic, but the kids/teens of the time never thought of it like that. It was as if the same word had two different meanings.

Con: Repeating the F-slur so many times in this song. Why? Is it meant to be rage bait? If so, why? If you're trying to come off as an ally, pissing off the queer community with excessive use of slurs ain't the way to achieve that, man! Lol. Is he trying to desensitize us to the word? I mean, maybe? But it is too early, you need to let the gays reclaim the word properly, then let decades pass until people forget what it used to mean and then - maybe - you can use it in a neutral sense. Whatever the goal may be with the repetition, it isn't doing what he thinks it's doing. Saying it once would have been enough.

It's almost like me saying the N-word and going on about how people used to say it back in the day and how back then it was considered fine. The only difference is that the F-slur was used when me and Kendrick were kids/teens (he's five years older than me) and the N-slur was decades before that.

(I swear a lot in this blog, I do not filter myself. Once there was a black artist who said the phrase "pussy n*ggas" in his lyrics a lot and it annoyed me, and I addressed that. It has been the only word I've "beeped out", because I do not feel like I have the right to say it. Second one is a few paragraphs earlier, when I didn't want to say r*tarded, because I'm not disabled and it's not my place to decide if that word should be used or not. I don't think I've ever used the N-word after asking my mom what it meant (she calmly explained it means "a black person", but it's a very very mean and bad word and I should never use it). But we used to use the Finnish equivalent of the R-word a lot when I was kid, to insult the other person. It was fucked up and I would never say that word today.)

Con: "She wasn't gay, she ate pussy, and that was the difference / That's what I told my friends in second grade" Kid logic ain't logic-ing, lmao 😂 What did lil Kdot think gay women did in the sack? Also, why would he write that in a song?

Then he goes on to talk about his cousin, who came out as a trans woman and actually went through with the medical transition process, instead of just socially transitioning like his aunt. 

Con: Kendrick uses he/him pronouns of a trans woman, and deadnames her. You literally have a source, two sources, in your own family. Ask them what is ok and what is not. Idk, some trans people are fine with deadnaming, but it is generally considered not ok. 

Pro: I like the bar "The Barbie dolls played off the reflection of Venus". Even though it is a stereotype that girls like dolls, but if the cousin grew up in a similar household to Kendrick and his aunt, where playing with dolls is deemed something "only girls do", and she chose to play with them anyway - she's telling you something. I was told "every girl has a favorite Disney princess" and I chose Pocahontas because she isn't a princess, she's the chief's daughter. I technically answered the question (I was a good kid, I wanted to please the adults - partially because my dad was very quick to anger if I didn't, and was verbally aggressive), but I didn't "feel like a girl" so I was trying to reject anything people told me girls do.

Con: Mary-Ann didn't change her gender, she transitoned. Technically speaking, changed her sex to match her gender. Sex is your biology, what you "got in your pants", gender is your psychology, what you got between your ears. Another valid ways to express the same thing, if a rapper wants some variety to choose from to match rhyme schemes, would be "she started HRT" or "is on HRT". That's short for hormone replacement therapy, aka biological males taking estrogen and biological females taking testosterone. Another word one can use is gender-affirming care. Some people also use top surgery to refer to masectomy (removal of breasts) and bottom surgery to refer to genital surgery, where they essentially make a penis out of a vagina or a vagina out of a penis. Not all trans people go through all of this - they can choose not to do anything, if they feel comfortable enough in their own body (most of us don't), they can do some of the procedures or they can do all of them. And there are options to go about it. (Jammidodger on YouTube is a great source, he's a trans man with a doctorate on gender studies. But he's, like, very chill and easy to understand despite being so highly educated on the matter.) My point is, that if you're talking about a specific person like Kdot here, you might wanna check up with them first. Keep in mind that just like with cis people, what the person's genitals look like and what surgeries they've had and what medications they're on are very personal and invasive questions and they are under no obligation to talk to you about these things. In that sense "gender-affirming care" is actually the best option, 'cause it can mean any medical procedures they're going through that have to do with being trans, and therefore you don't have to ask what their specific medical journey has been / will be.

Pro: Deadnaming was a quote, Kdot didn't say that. But he repeated it. It's a bit on the gray area - on one hand one should not say it, because it can hurt Mary-Ann to hear the name people used to call her (think of it as a certain nickname or a song your mind associates with a person who hurt you - a parent or an ex for example - and how you feel when you hear that nickname or song). Even if your intentions are good, you might still 1) hurt her accidentally just by using it & 2) give haters and transphobes ammo to use against her. On the other hand, we don't know if he asked Mary-Ann and she said it's fine. Also, generally speaking, if using the deadname is justified somehow, it's a bit more acceptable. I.e. there was this article that said something along the lines of "Actor Elliot Page, formerly known as Ellen Page, starred in Juno where he played a pregnant teenager", and trans people used this as an example of a situation where deadnaming was done right. His deadname was needed to explain why is there a picture of a pregnant teenager on an article about a male actor. So, I guess in that sense, deadnaming Mary-Ann can be acceptable here - there has to be some way he can express to us that his cousin is trans, to make a song like this. His audience is mostly cishet men, I assume, so he has to make them understand she's trans.

Pro: Standing up to his cousin at the church. That is an ally. A bit of uneducated ally, but an ally nevertheless. And he used she/her pronouns!
Being passively pro-queer is the bare minimum. Actually speaking up and taking action to further our cause is real allyship.

Pro: "The day I chose humanity over religion." Yes! Trans rights are human rights. Besides, hating on other people and wishing they'd die cannot be God's will, IMO. Bible doesn't even have any paragraphs against trans people, they're not mentioned once. You're just a bigot if you justify your transphobia with your Christian beliefs.

"Con": "See, I was taught words was nothing more than a sound /If everything was pronounced without any intentions". Doesn't work like that, though. I could say the N-word and not mean any harm with it, but that doesn't make it ok for me to say, because that word has been used to hurt black people in the past. As a rapper, you should know better now and not repeat the F-word so many times. Expressing once that you regret the "F-bomb" - sure, good. I think your cousin and aunt will appreciate the apology. Words have power. Use it well.

Pro: At the end he acknowledges the connotations between the F-word and the N-word.

Summary about my personal opinion before seeing Knox's video:

 

Thoughts after seeing Knox's video

Here's the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQ2XrFFE8wc 

I did end up leaving a short comment anyway after seeing the video. Some of the people on the comments might have been a bit biased and made some errors in favor of Kendrick (like the commentor who said Kendrick's use of pronouns match existing gender norms - I'm paraphrasing, but anyway, that's basically what they meant - which they don't), but I think Knox was more objective than they were.

Knox FUCKING DELIVERED as an ally, omg!! It's so rare to see a cishet person get it so right and not make light of it or say "yOu CaN't SaY aNyThInG tHeSe DaYs", like... Come on. If this was about racial matters, you'd be much more careful with your words and not think twice about it, but when it's about queer issues suddenly you have to be "so careful" about what you say and not getting pronouns right is not a big deal (when i.e. someone's cultural heritage is) etc... I've come to expect it so much that Knox getting the pronouns and facts right was just 🤯... And not making light of it. <3  Getting everyone's pronouns right without much thought is a definite green flag when it comes to these things. Because if you already see the person as a member of the gender they've come out as, it comes naturally. That being said, I do have empathy for people who struggle but try their best. My cousin, my childhood BFF, is nonbinary as well and they changed their name soon after they came out. I made it a conscious effort to learn their new name before seeing them again, so I don't accidentally deadname them. But I did have to make that conscious effort. Just like you'd learn their new last name if they get married, you learn their new first name if they change it. It's as simple as that. And Knox was just... Ah, my poor little queer heart fell platonically in love all over again <3 He's great. I may not like 100% of his songs (and I am entitled to my opinion as a consumer), but I do support him as a person, 100%.
(And no, I don't think "cishet" is a slur, it's just a shorter way of saying "non-queer", just like "gay" is not an insult, "black" is not an insult, etc. They're just descriptors, with no negative or positive connotations behind them.)
Ps. Don't beat yourself up for not getting it right every time. The fact that you truly try your best is what counts to the trans person, that's what shows them that you love them.

I didn't think of the intro before seeing Knox's video, but there are the words "This is how we conceptualize human beings." Kendrick is telling about two of his relatives, from his own perspective, but he is sort of conceptualizing them through this song, to be about more than them three (him, his auntie and his cousin). To be a more wide concept than that.

After seeing Knox's video, I can see how it's deliberate how Kendrick's use of pronouns is all fucked up, why he says the F-slur so much. You see, the song has a timeline. It's not one continuous feeling or sentiment he has, like it often is in pop or metal music. The theory of it being a timeline is supported by him saying the word "faggot" in elementary school, then later in "middle school", and how he keeps using the word "now", as if he's telling us the journey of himself as a trans ally - "now I was at this point, then I was at this point" etc. My only criticism is that he doesn't seem to make much progress and then BOOM, he's a proper ally. It should be more gradual than that.

But lets go with it. First of all, Knox pointed out that Kendrick says he THINKS he's old enough to understand now. But he isn't, he doesn't yet understand. And with the timeline theory, this means he's been trying to understand this whole time but hasn't, really. And that's ok. It takes time, and your effort is what matters. 
I like how Knox pointed out and explained the "California king" bar. I got that it's a mattress size in America, and that the auntie and her gf were doing some "bedroom activities" on the street that Kendrick happened to witness. But I didn't get that the auntie was a "California king" which was Kendrick (supposedly) affirming her trans identity of the time. 

I sort of got the bars "Hoping that she pull up tomorrow / So I can hang out in the front seat / Six by nines, keeping the music up under me" - I got that she is the person that got him into hiphop, whilst not getting the reference (Knox got it, go check his video out). I just... Feel like I get Kendrick. Even when I don't get all of his bars. And I love it. 

The comments of "I wish they'd keep it to themselves" etc didn't occur to me, either (in reference to the bar "'He ain't living discreet, he's fine'"). I blame that on cultural differences. Yes, in Finland we have people who are just as bigoted and queerphobic, who think like this. But how we express it here vs. how they expess it in the US is different. Americans are much more vocal and will state their opinion out loud. Finns are much more reserved and will result to passive aggressiveness more than verbal argumentation. We're also much more open about our personal lives in general than Americans. In the US, it seems like it's normal to keep stuff in the family, behind closed doors, but here, we are (in my opinion) more open and honest about who we are. We don't hide shit, "keep it to ourselves", that's seen as dishonesty. Being openly queer is you being you, not lying to the people around you. But they might still be bigots so a lot of us stay in the closet anyway.

Knox said that "art is supposed to make people talk" and I do like that sentiment, and stand behind it. As long as you're not directly hurting anyone to create your art (I'm thinking about that one guy who put cats in a bag, banged them against the wall and called it art), I am technically for it. I might not always understand it, I might talk about it negatively here or elsewhere on the internet, but I am not saying it should not exist. And, like... look at this. Look at how many thoughts this one song (!!!) made me think, just on my own! 

As someone who studied theology at university level: Jesus was a hecking badass dude and hung out with the outcast of society and stood up for them. If you truly look up to Jesus, you stand with the the queer community, not against us.

And yes I'm keeping the picture there, the "At least you tried" star, knowing that Blogger is going to treat it as a thumbnail. Those were my own thoughts that were not affected by anyone else's. They are valid as they are. What an average consumer who isn't that familiar with hiphop (been truly into it only about 1,5 years) sees in the lyrics is a valid viewpoint that I'm not going to erase just because I know better now. Just like Kendrick did on this track, I'm showing the raw and honest version of who I am at the moment and then I hopefully learn from my mistakes if I made some. Human beings are all flawed. Each and every one of us. And each and every one of us is also capable of learning to be better.

The side tangent about my own queer identity

Here's a long side tangent of my personal journey with my queerness: Deep down, I always knew I was queer, I just didn't have the vocabulary to express myself. I didn't feel like a girl, but I definitely didn't feel like a boy either, and I didn't know there were other options. I used to be one of those "not like other girls" until I realized the others who used that sentence to describe themselves were hating on the girls who were like the other girls. I wasn't, I just didn't feel like the other girls. After that, I was just confused.
I was 12 when I first looked at a girl and realized I was attracted to her. She was a 14-year-old model dancing in a music video in her underwear, while a boy who has a crush on her is peeping through her window - I know, very problematic when we look at it today. The 2000s were a different time... Because they were both underage, this was seen as normal and acceptable, cute even. As for boys, I think I was 7 when I first thought a boy looked cute.
I've also had only a handful of romantic crushes in my lifetime - mostly when girls asked "who do you like" I just said the boy's name whom I thought was the nicest. I've written about this before in more detail, you can look it up if you're interested.
I was 19 when I finally realized I was bisexual and came out within a few months from that to my friends and my mom, later to my brothers. I already had a sapphic couple (a bi girl and a lesbian girl) in my friend group, and I knew my mom was cool, so I felt fine coming out to them. I know my dad has some prejudice against queer people and I'm not sure to this day if he knows I'm queer. We haven't stayed in touch after him and my mom broke up when I was ~24-25.
Me not feeling like a girl or a boy was a thing I thought about every once and a while (every few years), and this one time when I was ~22-23 it happened to cross my mind again and I realized smart phones are a thing now, I finally have a tool to look this up. The only source I could find was Tumblr. So, now I knew this was a thing that other people experience as well, but because we're talking about a bunch of teenagers on their computers and not medical professionals doing actual scientific research and discussing it, I didn't know what was causing it - well, none of us did, but I was questioning my experience because of it. Not the validity of it - I knew for certain I did not feel like a woman and that was a real experience, but you know - is this a queer identity or is this caused by a medical or psychological issue we don't know about, because this concept is so new, because this is a bunch of people sharing an experience and medical professionals haven't looked into it yet. I sat with my newly found identity for a while and then once when I was drunk, I came out to my then-boyfriend and one of my brothers and our cousin. It went horribly wrong, because we were all waaaay too drunk, none of the vocabulary existed in Finnish yet, and they had never heard of this concept before.
My ex not being able to accept my identity over the next two years was one of the reasons I broke up with him. There were other reasons as well, which I'm not getting into rn. I think my brother's cool with it, but he doesn't talk about it to anyone (could be that he doesn't know I'm out now - "outing" people who are not out is considered a wrong thing to do and he's pretty "woke" about this stuff). My cousin's a right-wing politician now... So he's certainly not ok with my identity...
Shortly after realizing I'm nonbinary, I also realized I'm not bi, because "bi" is "two", you're attracted to two genders. I identified as polysexual for a few years (attracted to multiple genders, but not all) back when I didn't know one's sexual and romantic orientations don't have to line up. Then, when I did find out I can be romantically only into certain genders and sexually into others, and that aromanticism as a separate thing from asexuality is a thing, I started identifying as pansexual and gray-aromantic. And lately, I've started to think omnisexual is actually a better descriptor for me, since, yes, I am attracted to people regardless of their gender (like pansexuals), but what the person's gender is changes the way I'm attracted to them (for pansexuals, it doesn't).
As for my gender, I used the terms demi girl and demi girl flux for quite a while (feeling partially like a girl; feeling like one's gender is fluid between feeling like a girl and feeling like a nonbinary person). But later on, as I started to really question what were things I was actually feeling myself and what were societal expectations placed on me, how I self-identified changed into being a 100% solid nonbinary identity. Some nonbinary people feel like they don't have a gender, but I feel like I do, so I use the term genderqueer now.
In summary, I currently identify as genderqueer (and use they/them pronouns), omnisexual and gray-aromantic. Here's a link to my almost-up-to-date Gender Tag (by Atlas Wylde): https://zinethanelama.blogspot.com/2024/01/the-gender-tag-updated.html?zx=440861c4574682b9 
I don't expect anyone but me to remember all of these terms etc about me. I'm a librarian - I love words and language and classifying things. This is fun to me. Just remember I'm queer and use they/them pronouns and you're good.